


Silent Siren

by pamdizzle



Series: Tumblr Fics and Drabbles--Gobblepot Edition [4]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existentialism, First Kiss, First Time, Future Fic, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, M/M, References to Homophobia, extradition laws, qatar - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 04:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamdizzle/pseuds/pamdizzle
Summary: Gotham is reunified with the rest of the nation, but after suffering more losses than he can summon the will to cope with, Jim leaves the city. As time passes, he finds, the city leaves him too, more or less. Yet, just as he begins to make a home somewhere new, a familiar face disrupts the new sense of peace he's begun to slowly cultivate.An alternate take on how season 5 could have ended for Jim, plus Gobblepot, of course.





	Silent Siren

**Author's Note:**

> Long time, no see. I ran across this lovely art by foxsteel--fanart, which you can find here: https://foxsteel--fanart.tumblr.com/image/186222228645 
> 
> It had a nice little prompt regarding Jim, Oswald, and a country of no extradition, post season 5. So...here ya go! I couldn't resist. <3

Jim leaves the city on a Wednesday, boards a plane to Chicago where he spends the rest of his week pacing his hotel room dithering over his upcoming start date with Chicago PD. He thinks of all the decisions that have lead him to this moment, thinks of Lee and Barbara, and a baby that never stood a chance, really. 

That’s twice now. 

Twice Jim has dreamed of picket fences with a soft-haired beauty and a tiny set of hands secured within his own, and twice that dream has gone up in flames, burned him from the inside out. Often of his own device, as unintentional--hell, as well-intentioned as he’s always meant his actions to be. 

He looks out the window at a city that is both familiar and not, swirling by in streams of blurred cars on a complex freeway system, the night sky clouded not by mother nature but the light pollution of too many people in one place.

It all seems so disconcertingly familiar. Like he’s about to open a book he’s read before, bracing for a whole new set of horrors and fuck. He’s only 38, but he feels so fucking old, so fucking tired. 

Jim leaves Chicago on a Monday. 

His savings weren’t substantial before the fall of the city, but once Gotham had been reunified with the rest of the nation he’d been rewarded for his efforts with an unprecedented and sizable check from the State Department. If he wants to be a dick about it, Jim might call it hush money. In a perfect world, he would have nobly refused it outright, but he’d lost everything in that godforsaken city, to a lost cause he wasted himself and his soul trying to save. His soul. Lee’s soul. The souls of his two unborn children. 

So maybe...maybe he’s taking the money—reparations—and running. He runs pretty far, goes and sees the places he’s always dreamed about but never had an opportunity to visit. He starts in France, enjoys the sights and the food, then hops a train and travels around Europe for a while. Weeks pass, then months. Between bouts of depression he grows out his beard and hair, then cuts it off in varying fits of pique.

In the silence of his isolation, he often thinks of Gotham, the people he left behind. He wonders if any of it made a difference yet can’t bring himself to check the news. He pictures the city, but can’t imagine it any cleaner, any happier than he found it. He doesn’t want to know, chooses ignorance over guilt; just one more choice he makes as the distance expands between himself and a past that left him wrung out and defeated. With every new experience, every fresh step into unfamiliar cities, every journey through open landscapes in different countries, Jim feels further and further removed from a version of himself he barely recognizes.

His perspective, once so narrow and focused on Gotham, expands and struggles to reconcile ‘the good fight’ with an existential realization that none of it ever mattered. Not for a goddamned thing, really. Jim looks for answers in books, in experiences—certain now that none of his own answers were based in anything of substance. By the time he reaches the beaches of Qatar, he’s no longer interested in making comparisons between each new city and Gotham. Everyone of them is brighter, happier; full of life and expectation. It’s a pattern his inner detective can’t ignore, one that steadily seems to push him toward some kind of epiphany.

He wanders around the capital city of Doha, its lush gardens, bustling market and spends an entire day at the museum. It isn’t until he visits the beach that something in him settles. He’s surrounded by people and the noises of a city even busier than Gotham and it feels, for the first time in months, like home.

It takes a few weeks, but Jim finds an affordable lease just outside the city. It’s a small one bedroom, but it’s more than enough space for a single person, overlooking the beach. He plants his feet in the sand, resolved to stay for a while. It doesn’t take long to regain fluency in Arabic, more of a challenge to learn the nuances of the varying dialects within Doha, but Jim manages it with relative ease. He finds himself, six months later, exchanging pleasantries with familiar faces at the market where Jim works as a cashier a few days a week just to keep himself busy.

It’s an uncomplicated life, paid for by American taxpayers, but Jim figures by now that it isn’t as if he didn’t pay his dues up front, starting with his enlistment some twenty-odd years ago. All over his body, littered with scars and nerve damage, is an ode to the dues he’s paid. He just…doesn’t overthink it.

Jim doesn’t overthink a lot of things anymore, pointedly ignores a great many opportunities to dwell in the past. Alone in his apartment, he passes the time by reading, or caring for the herbs he keeps on the windowsill of his small, perfunctory kitchen. When he can’t distract himself with comfort, he takes on extra hours at the market, or sleeps.

Jim’s never been so well-rested in all his near-forty years, which is probably why the adrenaline rush knocks him so off-kilter when he spots dark hair and pale skin not two meters to the right of his booth on a Thursday morning in the market. He wraps up his transaction without any conscious thought, arms and mouth working despite himself as he tries to decide if he’s experiencing a hallucination brought on by avoiding his Gotham-shaped hole of despair.

“Thank you,” says a voice that’s far too clear to be an exaggerated memory, in perfect Arabic. “I’ll be sure to try them while I’m here.” 

Jim’s feet move him forward of their own volition, his mouth forming words without thought. “Everything’s in order,” he tells his boss. “See you tomorrow, Kasun.”

He follows Oswald through the stalls of Souq Waqif, onto the streets toward the Clock Tower. He looks almost exactly the same, dressed as neatly as ever if much more conservatively. The differences are subtle, but clearly evident to anyone familiar with Oswald’s typical flair. There are no coordinated paisley ties and pocket squares, the suit he wears of noticeably lesser quality than that of the Penguin Jim recalls. The soles of his shoes are actually worn, soon in need of replacement despite being polished to perfection. They are remarkedly unremarkable, some cheaper approximation of a traditional oxford.

Jim only notices the messenger bag, a worn but tasteful leather accessory, when Oswald opens it to retrieve a mailbox key. They’re in an upscale neighborhood, and Jim realizes with an air of amusement, fond despite himself, that Oswald’s clothes have taken second seat to his overall comfort. He’s taken up residence in one of the most expensive buildings in the city, Jim knows from his own past inquiries.

He shakes his head a moment later, dithers as he watches Oswald quietly step inside over whether or not to follow. Whatever Penguin is doing in Doha, it’s got nothing to do with Jim; it can’t. Can it? It’s a question he can’t ignore, he realizes, and then he’s sprinting across the street, narrowly avoiding the blunt end of a Ferrari as he steps onto the curb just outside the entrance to the apartments.

Just beyond, Jim can see Oswald re-locking his mailbox, empty handed as he drops the key back into his messenger bag, his limp is less pronounced than the last time Jim saw him, as he slowly crosses the lobby. Jim quickly darts into the revolving door, then flattens himself alongside a decoratively potted ficus as Oswald waits for the lift. It’s now or never, he decides when it opens, miraculously empty. Jim clears the doors just before they shut, enveloping them both in a tense silence.

Oswald stares at him, wide-eyed and slack jawed for a handful of moments before instinct takes over and he backs himself into the furthest corner of the carriage he can find. His eyes search frantically for an escape that isn’t there, arms crossing protectively around his midsection. His bottom lip trembles, and Jim raises his hands in a calming gesture he bemusedly realizes is very reminiscent of the past. 

“Oswald,” he says, finding his voice only just above a shaking, uncertain whisper where he’d intended it to be steady and reassuring. “Don’t panic,” he tries to sooth.

To his credit, Oswald sucks in a reaffirming breath through flared nostrils and though his posture remains curled and afraid, he replies in a disbelieving whisper, “Jim?” Nervously, he licks his lips, then asks, in a tone boarding on accusing, “What the hell are you doing here?”

The elevator dings on the tenth floor, forestalling his answer, and Jim follows Oswald out into the hall, much to the man’s clear unease. He waits, watching as Oswald falters toward a decision before huffing a defeated sigh and leading them down the hall. The door is labeled 104, and Jim quietly follows Penguin across the threshold, too thrown by the surrealism of the moment to be on his best guard.

Oswald has the gun trailed on him before Jim even realizes his misstep. “There’s no extradition in Qatar,” Oswald tells him coldly, in that practiced, cultured English diction of his, hands shaking in a way they never used to as he aims the pistol at Jim’s chest.

“I know,” Jim replies, hands raised in supplication. “I live here now.”

Cold blue eyes regard him critically, sweeping his form as he takes in every detail of Jim’s appearance. He finds a sort of comfort in finally seeing a side of Oswald he recognizes, knows he’s analyzing every nuance, that he’ll draw the correct conclusion. It’s what he does.

Oswald lowers the gun. “I didn’t know. I swear it, Jim,” he finally replies tiredly. “Is it…going to be a problem?”

Jim’s eyebrows meet his hairline with incredulity. “Are you actually asking me if you can stay?” 

“I’m not—I have a job,” Oswald pleads. “A real job, Jim. I don’t want…” he breaks off with a choke, eyes misting with fresh tears, and yet there’s none of the mania Jim is accustomed to. Only a quiet desperation that haunts the corner of his eyes. “Please…”

Jim should tell him to leave, threaten to make him if that’s what it takes but it’s difficult to summon the will. That old conviction that used to fuel his sense of right and wrong is long past spent. Instead, a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding rushes out of him with a comforting sense of moral apathy. Oswald is, at least as Jim has always known him to be, the worst sort of human being when it suits him, up to and including murderous.

Standing in front of Jim in his costly, but modest apartment with soft, wind-swept hair and a fear so tangible it chokes the space between them, it’s hard to reconcile the man before him with the Penguin he remembers. It says a lot, probably, about his own fractured state of mind that he even considers it, let alone what he ultimately decides. Flippantly, no less.

“Not my circus,” he says with a shrug, “not my clowns.”

They stand there like that, staring at one another with varying degrees of shock before finally Oswald sniffs, clearing his throat as he straightens his shoulders. It’s nowhere near as confident as it’s meant to look, Jim is certain, but Oswald graces him with a hospitable smile nonetheless, as he gestures toward the couch.

“D-do you,” Oswald actually stutters, struggling as if to wrench the words from his throat. Like he’s forgotten all those carefully practiced social graces. “Tea? I…I’ll make. Some tea?”

Jim arches a brow. He shouldn’t stay, definitely not. They could part ways here, never see each other again—it was fluke to have bumped into one another in the first place. Jim could walk out right now, satisfied that his questions have been answered, that he doesn’t need to worry about this unexpected confrontation.

“So,” he says instead, as he rounds the sofa and takes a seat, “what, uh…what kind of work are you doing?”

Oswald blinks, then sputters into motion, hobbling off into the kitchen. “Nothing terribly exciting,” he demurs, continuing only when it’s apparent that Jim’s silence is expectant. He places the kettle on to heat with a quiet, reluctant sigh. “I work as an assistant cook at La Spiga.”

“Ah,” Jim replies, and it’s disconcertingly easy to ignore the patterns of Oswald’s past repeating, here in Doha. This isn’t the kind of city that bends easily to the will of whatever darkness rules the folk of Gotham. Jim has found, over and over, that their cursed little island exists in a vacuum. Maybe he should have let it rot, left before it could stain him permanently with its sick.

Oswald takes his silence as a cue to fill it. “I was in Hungary for a while—thought I’d retrace my mother’s childhood footsteps. It was…” he trails off for a moment, surprisingly unguarded when he finally admits, “too much.”

Jim hums, understanding in the most general of ways how it feels to lose a parent. The desire to discover all the unknown pieces of someone dear to you, to shape your memory around those details. Understand how they came to be, the method to their existence.

“Anyway,” Oswald disrupts the morbid pause of air between them, “what do you, er…Do you have a hobby? Or…a new trade?” He tries for levity. “Using your detective skills to help tourists discover their best vacation?”

Jim snorts. “You’re not yourself, are you?” he asks bluntly.

Oswald diverts his attention to the stovetop, where he cuts the heat beneath the whistling kettle. Quietly, facing away as he makes their tea, he answers, “Not as such, no.”

They don’t talk much, after that. Relaxing in degrees, in the sparse time it takes for Jim to consume his tea—early grey with a healthy dose of honey—and beat an awkward, anticlimactic retreat. That should be the end of it, really.

It isn’t.

Jim finds himself face-to-face with Oswald in the market, once again. This time, he’s at Jim’s booth, studying the avocados just a bit too closely to be entirely innocent. He meets Jim’s eyes with an embarrassed tinge to his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, clutching his bags in a grip that trembles with its ferocity. “I just…I don’t. I don’t know anyone else.”

“So…when you asked me where I was working…”

“I was just trying to make conversation,” he admits, then shakes his head, adds, “I’m sorry—I won’t—I’m sorry.”

“Oswald,” Jim calls to him, almost too late to be heard. Oswald turns back to face him, cautious. Wary. “It’s…you can. Come by. Sometimes.” Jim scratches at the back of his neck, a nervous tick he’s never quite grown out of it. “If, uh, if you want.”

He’s graced with what might be the most blindingly genuine grin Jim’s ever seen. He hadn’t known Oswald was capable. “I…okay,” he replies sheepishly. He gives a hesitant, awkward wave before dazedly turning away and disappearing into the crowd.

“New friend?” Kasun asks, having crept up behind Jim in his distraction.

Jim blows out a heavy breath. “More like…an old one.”

\--

Oswald, much to Jim’s surprise, doesn’t come back immediately. It flies in the face of everything he used to know about Penguin, who was nothing if not tenacious in every way. There’s no eager sniveling, or pompous wit when he finally does return either. Instead, he greets Jim with a humble bow of his head, and a meekly spoken, “Hello, Jim.”

“Oswald,” he returns, voice carefully neutral. Maybe he ought to make it easier for him, ask Oswald how it’s going, a conversational prompt to let him know he’s welcome. He bites his tongue; secretly enjoys watching him squirm. Just a little. It’s a petty thing, doesn’t really have a place in the corner of this new life he’s carved out for himself, but old habits die hard, don’t they?

It has the desired effect, and Oswald seems off-balance as he nervously chews his bottom lip. It quivers pathetically, and Jim just can’t get over it. He wants to grab Oswald by the shoulders and shake him, ask him what the hell is the matter with him. What the hell happened to make him into…into whatever the hell this is. He’s…concerned, he realizes with no small amount of shock.

“You were being polite,” Oswald says finally, and not unkindly. “Before.”

Jim rakes a hand over his face. “No. Yes. I—”

“It’s alright.” He straightens his shoulders, and it’s an admirable show of bravado. “I understand. I suppose I was just being…silly. New place and all. You know how it is.” He plasters on a smile. “I should get a move on anyway. I need to get back to the restaurant before we open for dinner!”

It’s eleven in the morning, and La Spiga isn’t all that far. “You sure?” he finds himself asking. “I was about to grab lunch. You could…uh, if you have time that is—”

“Oh…I.” Oswald flushes. “You’re sure? You don’t…have to.”

There are a lot of things Jim doesn’t have to, and most of the time he doesn’t anymore. “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t,” he says.

\--

They grab some falafel and pita from a stand on the other side of the market, eat down by the port. Oswald doesn’t talk much, and Jim doesn’t push though he’s dying on the inside with the need to interrogate. He cracks, eventually.

“You know,” Jim begins, “of all the faces I never expected to see again, yours is probably right at the top. Thought Gotham was your home?”

Oswald sniffs, gaze flitting in Jim’s direction for half a beat before skittering back down to his meal, and then finally off into the distance. Somewhat testily, just enough to trigger Jim’s memories of Penguin, he asks, “Never could turn it off, could you?”

“Not anymore than you, I’d guess,” Jim replies with a shrug. “So what about it—you gonna tell me or not?”

Oswald huffs, regards Jim with a glare that lacks any real conviction. “If you must know,” he says, “I didn’t leave with the intention of staying away, but…” He sighs. “You’re going to think I’m crazy. I’m sure you already do…”

“What’s there to lose, then?” Jim prods, genuinely curious.

Oswald considers Jim for a moment, then his brow furrows as he explains, “It’s hard to explain. I had planned to take a brief sabbatical after I received a call from a Hungarian attorney. My mother had assets in the old world, left to her by relatives she’d not spoken to in decades. I was meant to settle her affairs quickly, maybe have an opportunity to learn something about her I didn’t already know.

One week, turned into two then to three. It was as if the longer I stayed away the less I felt compelled to return. It was…like an escape. Only, I never realized before that I’d ever been trapped.” He pauses, licks his lips. “I just know now, that if I ever do go back, I’ll never be able to leave again. I know it sounds crazy, but those first few weeks away felt like…like…”

“Waking up from a dream?” Jim finishes for him, and Oswald’s eyes snap to his so suddenly it’s almost alarming.

“You felt it too?”

There is a fountain of uneasy thoughts, rising up to meet this moment. Things Jim hasn’t wanted to examine too closely for fear of what they might reveal. His subconscious protecting his sanity, perhaps, but Oswald looks at him so earnestly now, pleading to be understood, and Jim finds he can’t deny him. Quietly, he nods.

“I felt it.”

Oswald laughs, a broken thing that’s more like a sob and Jim doesn’t know what else to do. So, he raises an arm and drops it across Oswald’s shoulders, a shock to them both, but soon enough Oswald relaxes against him, slowly regaining his composure. He wipes at his eyes, sniffling quietly as he fidgets with the food in his lap.

“I think,” Jim finally breaks the silence, saying aloud thoughts he’s been trying to bury since he jumped that first flight out of Chicago, “that it’s some kind of…sickness. It’s the city. It’s diseased.”

Oswald, ever bolder than Jim, takes the leap. “Evil,” he says, plainly. “Unnatural.”

Jim nods. “Yeah.”

\--

They don’t talk about it after that, but lunch becomes a regular occurrence.

\--

“I think I want to open my own restaurant,” Oswald tells him. They’re on the beach, looking out at the ocean, on a Saturday morning. Jim’s hair is dripping into his eyes, and he swipes it back with a lazy sweep of his hand.

“Your own Italian joint?”

Oswald snorts derisively. “Hungarian,” he corrects. “Well, mostly. I know quite a few Polish and German dishes as well. Everyone loves Schnitzel.”

“Fried chicken?”

This earns him a giggle. “No, Jim, you uncultured swine.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “Sure, it is. Beat the crap out of it, smother it in flour, douse it in oil and bam! Very flat, very fried chicken.”

Oswald clicks his tongue. “It doesn’t have to be chicken.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jim concedes. “Still. It is sometimes fried chicken.”

“Fine.” Oswald finally relents with an eyeroll. “Schnitzel is sometimes fried chicken, of a sort.”

“You still don’t like being wrong, do you?” Jim teases.

“No.”

His easy admission makes Jim laugh outright. When he glances over, Oswald is regarding him with something akin to hope.

“Are we friends?” Oswald asks him, eyes wide and earnest.

Jim feels the corners of his lips quirk. “You know, Oswald, I think we might be.”

“I made some friends at work,” Oswald confides, like it’s a secret. “They took me out with them to play trivia at a bar across the street from my apartment. They asked me to join their team, you know, permanently.”

It’s equal parts joyous and painful to see Oswald’s face distorted, not with malice but with genuine happiness at his revelation of making friends. Real friends, proper friends. Probably—no, definitely—for the first time in his adult life. Possibly, his entire life.

“Well, then. I’m happy to be counted among them,” Jim says, and Oswald lights up from the inside out with a fondness that twists in Jim’s gut.

Oswald looks away first, apparently overwhelmed. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, tinged with remorse. “I never did apologize to you…or anyone. I—”

He isn’t sure what possesses him to do it, but he finds Oswald’s hand and squeezes it. The touch renders him silent, and Jim interjects, “Don’t.”

“But, Jim—”

“You can’t,” Jim tells him, and suddenly he knows it’s the truth. “You can’t go back there. You shouldn’t. We both…” He falters for a second, takes a breath and says, “I like to think of it as a past life,” he confesses. “I’m not the same man I was, back then. Maybe my changes aren’t as vast as yours, but doesn’t it feel like a return to some kind of equilibrium? Less extreme versions of ourselves?”

“In some ways, maybe.” Oswald chews his lip, then adds, “In other ways, it’s the opposite.”

“Like what?”

“Happiness,” he says. “Peace.”

Jim nods. “Oh, definitely. Just being able to have it, even.” Once he starts, he finds he can’t stop. “And I know I should feel guilty, and not just for leaving the way I did, fucking off to the other side of the world without so much as a warning to Harvey or Lucious. Or Bruce. They’re probably pissed as hell—”

“Worried sick, more like,” Oswald interrupts.

“That too,” Jim agrees. “But I can’t bring myself to contact them. I’m afraid that the second I talk to anyone still connected to that place…”

“It’ll call you home,” Oswald correctly surmises.

“This is my home now,” Jim insists.

“I forgot how stubborn you can be.” Oswald hums. “Still. I regret the things I did or caused to happen to you. More than I can say.”

Jim huffs. Of course, Oswald couldn’t let it go. He thinks about a young man, dressed in black and white, pleading for Jim to save him. _‘It’s mental torture, Jim!’_ He doesn’t say it, not as well as Oswald, but he tries despite himself.

“I wasn’t perfect.”

“Maybe not,” Oswald allows. “But you were always…well. More resilient than the rest of us, by far, I think.” 

Jim doesn’t say anything to that. Nor does he say anything about the way their hands stay tangled between them in the sand, or the way Oswald leans into his space. Close to touching but not quite. There’s a familiar pull, there, but different now in how it’s unaccompanied by overwhelming guilt. Jim wants to lean into it, finds it’s as easy as breathing to turn toward Oswald’s profile and do just that. He closes his eyes and crosses the distance, brushes a kiss against Oswald’s temple, inhales the scent of sea and mint in the soft mess of his hair.

“Jim,” Oswald says, his name a gasp on his lips, and suddenly he knows.

“You were in love with me,” he whispers, voice awed by the realization. “Are you still—”

“Stop—”

“It’s okay,” Jim tries to reassure, but he feels how Oswald trembles. He leans away just enough that it’s his forehead resting against Oswald’s temple rather than his mouth.

“No, it isn’t.” Oswald sighs. “What about any of this is okay?”

“The part where we made it out,” Jim tells him. “The part where I ask if I can kiss you, and you say yes. Please, Oswald, say yes.”

He feels it, when the anxiety bleeds away and Oswald sags against him, eyes closed in surrender. Or relief. Or both. Like a prayer, he says, “Yes.”

Jim raises a hand to Oswald’s jaw, uses it to guide his lips to Jim’s own. It’s chaste and lingering, Oswald clearly unlearned and Jim severely out of practice, but it’s nice to warm up to it together. To feel the hesitant play of uncertain lips grow steadily more confident against his own, slowly teasing each other into something deeper, something so filled with longing that Jim nearly forgets where they are.

Nearly.

He brings them out of it, careful to check they weren’t observed. As lovely as Qatar is, as much as Jim now thinks of Doha as home, there are certain things still widely rejected in the region. When he’s certain they weren’t seen, sequestered as they are, Jim relaxes again.

“Why don’t we get outta here,” he suggests.

Oswald blushes, nods wordlessly. It gives Jim a thrill to have silenced him so effectively, knows there’s very little that used to be able to take the wind out of that sail. Oswald isn’t quite as boisterous as he used to be, but he’s still just as chatty; just as clever as he ever was. Enough that Jim still counts it as a win, is still flattered by Oswald’s flustered, Victorian reactions.

“Would you…” Oswald clears his throat. “That is, I would very much like it if—”

“Your place or mine?”

\--

Looking back, months later, Jim isn’t sure how it all came to this. How he’d gone from a small child in a beautiful suburb of an ugly city to a soldier, to an officer of the law in that same, ugly city, to someone who lives their life in the wind. How he changed from caring so very much about everything, from trying so hard to control the whims of the world around him, to damned near out of fucks to give.

He fucks Oswald instead, buries himself in him over and over again. They’re not the same people they once were, neither of them still so enamored of love that it’s imperative to spit it out, messy, between them. It’s there, in a thousand other unspeakable ways, in all the touches and whispers between them. The way Oswald curls into him, lazy in the morning. How he moves inside Jim, slow and careful, always with reverent, worshipful intent. How they map the terrain of each other’s bodies with fingers, and lips and imperfect skin.

He writes Harvey.

Eventually.

He’s shocked to receive a reply, words tinged with worry but devoid of malice. Still, they don’t call. Instead, Harvey passes along information on the well-being of their mutual friends, sends along their well-wishes, keeps details of the city itself conspicuously absent. Jim doesn’t inquire, and he doesn’t beg Harvey or Lucious or Bruce to leave, though he sometimes wants to, desperately.

“They aren’t ready to leave it,” Oswald tells him.

“I know,” Jim says, and he does. “Doesn’t mean I can’t wish.”

“They’ll come to it on their own,” he replies sagely, “or not at all.”

So, Jim sits beside Oswald on a beach in Qatar, and he listens for the siren call of a city he hates but can’t forget. He wonders, absently, if it howls at them from across the sea, if it curses their existence for abandoning it. He imagines the wind carries those howls away from Gotham, then breaks them harshly against the rocks that line the coast of their new home, so that when Jim opens his ears to the waves that roll back in along the shore, all he hears is hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you found typos, I apologize. I didn't have time to beta after posting. I'll scrape through it later tonight or tomorrow, but I'm off to a D&D session! If you liked what you read, typos aside, please do leave a comment or a kudo. :)


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